Owatonna’s Tristan Graham had a career night against New Prague on Saturday evening.

And boy did he save his best for last.

With his team stuck in a high-stakes, albeit unexpected, deadlock late in the fourth quarter against New Prague in the Section 1-AAAAA semifinals, Graham took a pitch on the right side, spun out of trouble in the backfield and knifed his way through the Trojans’ defense from 11 yards out to score the game-winning touchdown in the Huskies’ 14-7 victory at Federated Field.

With the win, top-seeded Owatonna (9-0) punches its ticket to the Section 1-AAAAA championship game for the ninth consecutive season and will host resurgent Rochester John Marshall (7-2) on Friday, November 1 at 7 p.m. The second-seeded Rockets took down No. 3 Northfield, 47-27, in a game they led 34-0 at one point. The Huskies won the regular season meeting in Rochester, 33-22, but trailed 14-6 at halftime.

Similar to its forgettable first half effort against John Marshall in Week 7, the Huskies simply did not play their best game on Saturday night against the Trojans. Hunter Theis was intercepted three times — each of which came deep in New Prague territory — and Owatonna was uncharacteristically gashed for several chunk plays. They were also whistled for a roughing the kicker penalty on a Trojans punt that ultimately set up their only scoring drive of the game late in the second quarter.

Bottom line, if it wasn’t for Graham, Owatonna might be turning in their jerseys on Monday morning instead of getting ready to prepare for the Rockets.

“Obviously we still have some things to solve on the offensive side of the ball,” Owatonna head coach Jeff Williams said after the game. “There were multiple great drives that we failed to get paydirt on and we just failed to do that. We are going to have to be a lot better or we are going to get are tails whooped next week (against John Marshall).”

Added Graham: “I think in the beginning of the game we came out a little flat and played down to their level.”

Running with zest and purpose from his first carry all the way until his heroic final touch, Graham racked up exactly 200 rushing yards on 33 carries and added a pair of receptions for 21 yards. With at least one more game left on the schedule, the junior tailback now needs just 132 yards to break the 1,000-yard milestone for the season.

“You’re going to get tired out there, but it’s all about grit and dedication,” Graham said. “I took a bunch of hits tonight, but, honestly, it’s about biting down on that mouth guard like everyone says and doing what you need to do.”

Nolan Ginskey led all Owatonna with 120 yards on eight receptions.

Hunter Theis finished 13-for-23 for 163 yards. His lone touchdown throw went to Blake Fitcher and spanned seven yards to help give OHS a 7-0 lead with 4 minutes, 52 seconds left in the first quarter.

New Prague leveled the scored with a 28-yard TD strike from sophomore quarterback Carter Denhartog to Michael Bruner.

Zach Dahnert ended the game with back-to-back sacks and forced a fumble earlier in the game.

Blake Davison led the Huskies with eight tackles and now sits 17 shy of reaching 100 for the season. Ryan McIntosh added 1.5 sacks.

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OWATONNA 14, NEW PRAGUE 7

FIRST QUARTER

O—Blake Fitcher 7 pass from Hunter Theis (Seth Johnson kick), 4:52

SECOND QUARTER

NP—Bruner 28 pass from Denhartog (Geiger kick), 1:07

FOURTH QUARTER

O—Tristan Graham 11 run (Johnson kick), 0:59

INDIVIDUAL STATS

PASSING (COMP-ATT-YDS-TD-INT)

Hunter Theis 13-23-163-1-3; TOTALS 13-23-163-1-3

RUSHING (ATT-YDS-TD-FUM)

Nolan Ginskey 1 (-6); Theis 5-14; Tristan Graham 33-200-1-0; TOTALS 39-208-1-0

RECEIVING (REC-YDS-TD-FUM)

Ginskey 8-120; Fitcher 1-7-1-0; Luke Webber 2-15; Graham 1-21; TOTALS 13-163-1-0

DEFENSE

Blake Davison 8 TCKL-1 SCK; Zach Dahnert 3 TCKL-2 SCK-1 FF; Jamie Lisowski 7 TCKL; Ryan McIntosh 1.5 SCK; Luke Webber 4 TCKL-1 INT; Darian Stransky 4 TCKL-0.5 SCK